A few of my thoughts if you wish to read

Stephen Kenny’s Ireland kick off the new era versus Bulgaria on Thursday. For hardcore Irish fans this is a big game surrounded with big expectations. These expectations are of a group of players who have not distinguished themselves over the past decade. So where are expectations coming from? One part is the Kenny’s overdue commitment to trying to play progressive attacking possession-based football. The other part is the faith being placed in the new breed of young players who have starred for our under-21s in their qualifying campaign. The faith being placed in these 19-21 year olds is something this piece wishes to take a look at.

The background to the Irish team over the past couple of years is one which anyone reading this should be familiar with. Irish teams haven’t disgrace themselves over the past decade overall but they have become hard to watch and seemed to channel the Roger Alan Wade lyric of having to be tough if you were going to be dumb in their tactical approach. They have achieved a remarkable level of consistency going back years in which they usually managed to score one goal a game. Almost by default this brought them great wins like over Italy at the Euros, Germany in Dublin or Austria in Vienna or disappointing defeats like Serbia in Dublin, Poland in Warsaw, France in the Euros. The one all draw has become the calling card of Irish football. In our last campaign under Mick McCarthy three of our four matches against our rivals ended 1-1. The energy around the team had become stale so to say the present injection of youth is badly needed is a huge understatement.

This is leading to a level of expectation around the young players that may be counterproductive to the team. In the early 00s our strength as a team meant any young players who were called up to the Irish senior squad normally had already amassed a decent level of experience at club level. This can be seen by observing Richie Sadlier’s Wikipedia page. He has 103 Millwall appearances and only one Irish cap before retiring due to injury. The dearth of our resources especially in attacking areas means the days of serving a lengthy apprenticeship before being called up to the Irish senior squad are gone for now.

I am old enough to have seen special talents come through and play for Ireland over the past 30 years. There are few of these players who broke through in their late teens and immediately performed in an Irish Jersey. Damien Duff and Aiden McGeady were two extremely gifted young players who were ripping apart Premier league defences apart in England and Scotland at 18. Yet it took Duff 3 years after his debut to start showing anything close to his best form for Ireland. For McGeady it took even longer to sparkle for Ireland and he never really found consistency in his performances. I hope those who support the Irish team are cognizant of the reality that the young players that are being added now are likely to take until 2022 to truly find their feet at this level. John O’Shea is another example of an Irish youngster who was very special who took time to really come into his own for Ireland.

In regards to the new man in charge; Stephen Kenny, there’s loads that can be said and has been said and will be said. His predecessors effectively became well paid punch bags when a bad result arrived or a qualification was missed. Most of the great managers in football now manage great players. I can only think of Marco Bielsa as an example where a great manager is managing players who are noticeably weaker. Hopefully Ireland now have an average to good manager over some good players and some average ones. No matter who is the manager, we still have a 1st choice goalkeeper who’s second choice for his club, a defensive lynchpin who has been moved on from his lower mid table Premier League club, a midfield where only one player was an automatic starter for his Premier league club. Strikers who are more noted for their hard work than their goalscoring.

If Stephen Kenny or Mick McCarthy or Pep Guardiola is the Irish manager; James McClean is still going to struggle to control a 40 yard diag with his first touch, Shane Long is still going to miss chances that most Premier League strikers would score. Anyone looking to champion Stephen Kenny can find plenty of reasons, anyone who thinks he has been over-promoted can find plenty of reasons as well. 

In Bulgaria we have as good a fixture as Stephen Kenny could hope to have. They have a squad of no name players; their players with the shortest betting odds to score tomorrow are Dimitar Iliev, Bozhidar Kraev & Todor Nedelev. So they are poor without being so poor that they are a Latvia or Lithuania where they have no real predigree at all and a draw would be seen as a plain bad result. A draw wouldn’t be terrible vs Bulgaria but also we mightn’t need that much to go well to win either. For now the tradition of Ireland scoring one goal may continue and clinch us a victory.

Prediction Ireland 1 (Hendrick) – Bulgaria 0